The Era of Citizens United Could Be Nearing Its End | Hacker News Reader

The Era of Citizens United Could Be Nearing Its End

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26 pointsTomte13 comments

This won't go anywhere. Too much influence at stake. The court will just decline.

Instead of directly challenging the legality of this dark money, it may be better to force transparency. For every donation over a thousand dollars, the donor must register it with the FEC else they are in jeopardy of civil fines and other civil penalties. In the case of an organization donating the money, they must disclose the source of the money similar to Sarbannes Oxley.

I find the idea that the current Roberts court would issue a ruling reducing corruption a laughable proposition.

Roberts, Alito, and Thomas were part of the original majority in the Citizens United v. FEC decision, and I have a hard time believing more than one of Barrett, Kavanaugh, or Gorsuch would break ranks in a similar case.

But perhaps more importantly, several justices on the court have also since been revealed to have accepted undisclosed gifts (i.e., bribes) for decades (Thomas being the largest offender). Worse, the justices failed to recuse themselves from cases involving those who'd provided said gifts. Even worse, once the story broke about the undisclosed gifts, the Roberts court rejected the idea of independent ethics review for the court's members, insisting it could continue to be trusted to police itself despite the revelations of its own corruption.

The Roberts court is a very pro-corruption court.

Do you have examples of cases where gift-receiving judges should have recused? I tried looking into Thomas (the biggest news story) and ProPublica is very outright that the gift giver (Harlan Crowe) has not been involved in a Supreme Court case since Thomas was on it. The issue people seem to be focusing on is disclosure, the conversation doesn't seem to be at recusal.

The Supreme Court rules on things like the chevron doctrine which allows the executive agencies to implement and enforce regulations across all industries. Does Harlan crowe do business in one of “all” industries? There is of course the topic of the article, citizens united which gave Crowe the ability to massively influence politics. Cases in the Supreme Court affect everyone in the country because it defines or redefines the law with every decision. To even begin the train of thought that a billionaire could be unaffected by _all previous supreme court opinions_ is just strange.

> To even begin the train of thought that a billionaire could be unaffected by all previous supreme court opinions is just strange.

Yeah, that is strange. I'm curious why you brought it up.

> the gift giver (Harlan Crowe) has not been involved in a Supreme Court case since Thomas was on it.

You are the one who suggested Harlan Crowe has no interest in the outcomes of any Supreme Court cases and that him giving undisclosed gifts to the justices in the millions of dollars range couldn’t therefore justify the need for a recusal.

Alternatively you could be honest and admit that the nature of these gifts being undisclosed coming from a person with inherent interest in almost every case is cause for major concern and probably ground for recusal from _every_ case. A Supreme Court justice should be extremely mindful of even the possible appearance or impression of unethical behavior as their unethical behavior serves to discredit the institution itself.

Why do you feel the need to come here and defend this plainly unethical behavior from justice thomas?

I don't think it's plain. My motivation for commenting, generally, is that a lot of people seem to have weird impressions of SCOTUS. In this case, I really don't see cause for recusal, though I suppose it would've been preferable to disclose. (But I suspect I only feel obliged to admit that because of the fervor with which the press reported it, which seems to me somewhat politically motivated.)

I'd be interested if there were an example of a case where Thomas took an opinion that was (a) at odds with his judicial style and (b) clearly and directly benefitted Harlan Crowe. The fall of Chevron deference is not to me one of those cases. I see it, plainly, as returning some powers back to the proper branch.

You seem to be suggesting that no judges should receive gifts from at least any business leaders at all? And if they do that they should recuse. I think that's a rather extreme position. I don't think the minds of justices are so malleable.

Orange man bad, republicans bad. Thanks for the info

Pretty bad these days the outcome of a court case will depend upon what political party will be put at a disadvantage. Even this article tryed to frame the case as "no political party will be disadvantaged".

There is no law in the US these days.

Another, probably better method that avoids SCOTUS to overturn Citizen's United is going back to the source — the fact that states create corporations and specify their allowed activities — and amending state corporate-charter law to strip corporations of the enumerated power to spend on elections or ballot issues. AFAIK, bills are already in progress in Montana, Maine, and I just heard about one in Hawaii too.

If anyone has more info, please post.

In Citizens United Kennedy held that government can't regulate speech by identity, not just individual or corporate, but by any form of organization. A state cannot evade that decision by revising the form.

It was already considered unconstitutional to legislate based on the content of speech. Citizens United added the identity of the speaker.

  the worth of speech “does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual”  -- https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/310/

Yes, and it seems part of the work-around here is not that it is restricting the ability of the corporations to speak, they can say what they want, but by limiting the ability to spend money, especially money that is invisible. It seems to be more of a transparency act than a constraint [0].

Even this would be helpful as it would prevent corporations from saying one thing while they spend millions to elect candidates to do the opposite. At least now their activities would be public and they could be called out.

From the article:

>> The key, Mangan said, is about transparency. He said the current system allows private corporations to be established and collect money, but to keep those donors and the amounts hidden from public view. Those corporations, which can consist with as few as one donor, can give to candidates and causes under the corporation name, although the people supporting that corporation and the amount of money donated are unknown, leading to the term “dark money.”

>> The change in Montana law would simply not grant the corporations the power to give to candidates or causes, but would allow individuals to give, but those donations would be tracked.

[0] https://dailymontanan.com/2025/08/01/group-releases-text-of-...

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